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4 The Metaphysics and Morality of Forgiveness Keith E. Yandell Whatever help philosophy can bring in principle to understanding forgiveness , any actual philosophical help obviously comes from particular philosophers on particular occasions. We are fortunate, then, to have the clarity and high plausibility ofJoanna North's chapter (see chap. 3). I hope to extend the inquiry through a consideration of related topics of crucial relevance for the study offorgiveness. Forgiveness is a morally significant process that occurs between persons. This is not to deny that forgiveness can be spontaneous. Theoretically, a spontaneous act of forgiveness can be understood as the minimal limit on a process. Therapeutically, the possibility of spontaneous forgiveness gains its importance in the form of a warning that there is, relative to experienced time, probably no temporal limitation on how quickly forgiveness may occur. For my purposes, I understand a person to be a being that endures through time and whose essence resides in being capable of a self-consciousness , which he or she typically experiences (Yandell 1995). A person has both a psychological and a moral dimension. Philosophy is relevant to a consideration of forgiveness, because forgiveness has necessary and sufficient conditions that are partly metaphysical and partly moral in nature. In what follows, I will say a bit about both sorts ofconditions (see Yandell 1995, pp. 549-53, for definitions of conscious minds). One important topic that I will not do more than mention here is self-forgiveness; it deserves discussion on its own. The Metaphysics of Forgiveness: What Sorts of Things Forgive? It is obvious that there are conditions for forgiveness; in a world composed ofonly rocks, plants, and salamanders, there could be no forgiveness going on. Most obviously, it requires an offender who has done wrong and a victim who has been wronged. In the relevant sense of the terms offender 35 36 YANDELL: The Metaphysics and Morality ofFor,giveness and victim, both must be moral agents. The victim ofa rock slide not caused by negligence or action on the part ofsome other person is not victimized by an offender. It is individual persons who are victims and offenders in the primary sense ofthese terms, and societies, nations, businesses, and other institutions are victims or offenders in an extended sense of the primary. This in no way diminishes the importance of communal forgiveness and reconciliation. However, this raises the question of what a moral agent is. There is controversy, of course, as to what the correct answer is, and it is worth saying a little in explanation and defense of a particular answer (Frankfurt 1988; Yandell 1988). Determination The world is a complex place, and we do not actually have anything like a description ofeverything that is true of the world at a given time. But the concept "a description of everything that is true of the world at a given time" is perfectly consistent, and it provides a nice way of saying what determinism is. A determinist holds that a description of everything that happens in the world at a given time, plus the laws of logic and the laws of nature, strictly entails any description of everything that is true of the world at any later time. (The laws of nature may themselves be thought of as true generalizations grounded in the natures and causal powers of natural objects.) The determinist slogan is: The past determines a unique future. There is a simple argument to the effect that it is logically impossible or self-contradictory that determinism be true and that persons have the sort of freedom that is required for them to be morally responsible for their choices and actions. The argument is this: One is not responsible for anything that one has no control over. One has no control over the truth about the past, the laws of nature, the laws of logic, or anything strictly entailed by any ofthese. According to determinism, everything true ofthe present is entailed by the truth about the past, the laws of logic, and the laws ofnature. Hence, if determinism is true, no one has any control over anything, and thus, no one is morally responsible for anything. Since one cannot act rightly or wrongly if she is not responsible for her actions, if determinism is true, no one acts rightly or wrongly (Van Inwagen 1983). Freedom This argument that determinism precludes responsibility, briefand powerful , has another advantage relative to our present interests. It allows us to define the sort offreedom a moral...

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